First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Acts 10:1-16
January 16, 2005
Looking back on my ministry, there were a lot of years when it fell to me to give children’s sermons, and a lot of years when it didn’t. If I say so myself, I was decent at it, though never completely comfortable with it. Like a lot of my colleagues, I learned that the “show and tell” children’s sermon was the easy way out. If you could script nothing else, you could always begin by saying: “I’ll bet none of you kids can guess what I’m holding in my bag.” Although I was momentarily undone the morning the four year old looked me straight in the eye and said: “Jesus.”
So you can understand my empathy with Philip Yancey who, in the only children’s sermon he ever preached, pulled the following from his bag:
Some barbecued pork rinds
A fake snake
A large rubber fly
A paper container of sea scallops
And, accompanied by equal numbers of shrieks, screams and squeals:
A live lobster
(which he promptly named Larry….Larry the Lobster….who responded by waving his claws in a most menacing fashion).
All of which prompts a slight digression for a personal recollection. One Mother’s Day, I said to Bill and Julie: “Let’s not take Mom out today. Let’s cook for her at home.” So I went to whatever we had in Farmington Hills that passed for Papa Joe’s, and shelled out a smallish fortune on ready-to-go items from the gourmet foods section. After which I went to the lobster tank, had them extract four beauties, waited while their claws were secured by rubber bands, and then went home by way of the church kitchen (from which I borrowed, against all the rules and regulations of the United Methodist Women, a large, stainless steel cooking pot).
Once home, I filled the pot with water, fired it up to a vigorous boil, and then removed the lobsters from their wrappers and the bands from their claws. Whereupon they commenced to crawl all over the counter….that is, until I threw them in to boil. Which they did, quickly and scrumptiously. But not before their claws could be heard (during the last few seconds of their earthly existence) trying to climb up the inside of the pot in one final, futile flight to freedom. Researchers of such behaviors suggest that the reason no lobster ever makes it to the top of the pot is because the trailing lobsters pull the lead lobster back into the water. Which gives fresh, new meaning to that tired old phrase: “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” Needless to say, Bill and Julie….who liked lobster….ate none that day. But Kris and I did. And still do.
So why did Yancey show a lobster named Larry to a bunch of church school kids (along with all that other stuff)? Well, for the purpose of explaining to them….and to their parents….that, once upon a time, God disapproved of every one of those things in Yancey’s bag. And because of God’s disapproval, no Orthodox Jew would touch, let alone eat, any of those items.
Then he turned to the New Testament passage that I read for you just moments ago. By the time we reach this point of the narrative, Jesus is out of the picture….dying and rising are behind him now. And Peter is more or less the primary “player” in what remains of the Jesus Movement. This is before there is any clear-cut separation between Jews and Christians. Meaning that people close to Jesus are still very close to their Jewishness, and do not necessarily see any distinction between one and the other.
In this little story, we have Peter praying on a rooftop in Joppa at the home of Simon the Tanner. For those of you who love biblical detail, Joppa is a seaport on the Mediterranean (the same seaport from which Jonah sailed the other way when he was told to go to Nineveh). Today, Joppa is called Jaffa, and its city limits butt up against the city limits of Tel Aviv….in case you want to know….or go.
Peter is praying on the roof, not because it is higher (and therefore closer to heaven above), but because it is private (and much further removed from the chaos below). Furthermore, the fact that the house is owned by a tanner means that Peter, as a devout and law-abiding Jew, shouldn’t be there in the first place. Because a tanner works with the dead bodies of animals….making him ceremonially and permanently unclean, from a Jewish perspective. So why is Peter staying in this house in the first place?
At any rate, Peter is hungry up there on that roof. And maybe because hunger sometimes does funny things to your head….or because God sometimes does funny things to your head….Peter goes into a trance. And in his trance he sees a sheet….a very large sheet….descending from heaven like a sail of sorts (the words “sheet” and “sail” being interchangeable here). And the sheet is filled to overflowing with mammals, reptiles and birds….all of them “unclean” according to Jewish law. Meaning that Peter is not supposed to eat or touch them. Pigs would be on that list. Snakes, too. Along with rabbits, ravens, horned owls, screech owls and shellfish (certainly shellfish). If you want the whole list, go to Leviticus, chapter 11.
And everything in Peter’s training tells him that such as these are not only distasteful, but abominable (does the word “taboo” mean anything to you?). If, during the course of a day, Peter were to touch the carcass of an insect, he would have to wash himself immediately, all the while knowing he would remain impure until evening and unable to visit the temple in such a state. And should a spider happen to fall into his cooking pot, he would have to discard the contents and smash the pot.
But there in Joppa, up on the roof….with all this spread before him….all this potentially-tasteful but spiritually-awful stuff spread before him….Peter hears a voice say to him (not once, not twice, but three times): “Peter, kill and eat.”
Believing the voice to have come from the Lord, Peter protests: “I can’t, Lord. For I have never eaten anything profane or unclean.” Which leads to the rejoinder: “Do not call anything unclean that God has made.” For sheer shock value, picture a fully stocked bar being rolled into Texas Stadium during a Southern Baptist evangelistic revival, accompanied by a voice from heaven saying: “Drink up.”
Obviously, this story is about something other than food. I doubt that God has “a thing” for or against lobsters. There are those who argue that there may have been good reasons, once upon a time, for particular bans on particular foods. And cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas goes even further, noting that in one way or another, everything on the forbidden list is an anomaly to its species. Since fish are supposed to have scales and fins, shellfish do not qualify. Since birds are meant to fly, ostriches do not qualify. Failure to be aligned with your species means that you do not qualify. Leading Rabbi Jacob Neusner to add: “If I had to say (in a few words) what makes something unclean, it is something that, for some reason or another, is abnormal.”
The bigger problem consists in the fact that, in some parts of scripture, the clean/unclean ranking is applied to people. Levitical law identifies people with skin diseases or running sores, menstruating women and women who have just undergone childbirth, along with anybody who has touched the hide of a pig or the body of a corpse as being unclean. Which pretty much wipes out football players and funeral directors. I further quote:
For the generations to come, none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer food to his God. No man who is blind or lame. No man who is disfigured or deformed. No man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has an eye defect or damaged privates.
And certainly no Gentile. After Peter’s vision of the sheet….where he is told that he can disregard (or should we say “transcend”) the old food laws….he (Peter) is directed to the house of Cornelius. And Cornelius is an Italian Centurion. What’s more, Peter goes. Not only does he go, he enters. Yet the first words out of his mouth to Cornelius (and the friends and family of Cornelius) are more than a little off-putting.
You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him.
Only to add:
But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.
There was even an instruction in Peter’s tradition that help must never be given to a Gentile woman in labor. Because it will only bring one more of “them” into the world.
Well, the truth of the matter is that almost all of us are Gentiles. In terms of much of the biblical tradition….the tradition which we cherish….we are outsiders. A Chicago minister named Bill Leslie set out to demonstrate this reality when (one Sunday in his sanctuary) he divided the room so as to replicate the Temple in Jerusalem. Gentiles were given one color tag and sent to the balcony. For while the Temple had “The Court of the Gentiles,” it was the outer court….furthest removed. Jewish women (with different color tags) could sit on the main floor….in the women’s section. Which means that all you sopranos and altos don’t belong up here with me, but back there near the ushers. Jewish men were seated near the front. But even they could not approach the platform.
Then, at the rear of the platform, Bill suspended a curtain from ceiling to floor, so as to create a most holy place. This was the place where only the high priest was permitted to go….once a year….during Yom Kippur….on the Day of Atonement. And even then, he had to have a long rope tied to his ankle. That way, if something went wrong and he died while he was in the “most holy place,” lesser priests could pull him out without entering.
But in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion (Matthew 27:51)….Matthew being the gospel most familiar-with and oriented-to things Jewish….one of the serendipities that is alleged to have occurred during the crucifixion of Jesus is that the Temple’s curtain split wide open.
Meaning what? Meaning that in death as well as in life, Jesus dismantled the system that favored some over others….that determined who could approach God and who couldn’t….and that equated access to the Almighty with evidence of ceremonial or racial purity. Rung by rung (one rung at a time), Jesus dismantled the ladder that differentiated high from low, pure from impure, clean from unclean. People who, under the old system, would have contaminated Jesus by merely touching him….a naked madman, a woman with a 12-year period, and a dead little girl….were, thanks to the touch of Jesus, wised up, dried up and raised up. Leading Peter to say to Cornelius (and everybody in his house): “In truth, I have come to see that God has no favorites.” (Acts 10:34)
Human beings that we are…sinful human beings that we are….we are never going to be totally free from hierarchies, pecking orders, ladders, even walls. Outside the church. Inside the church. Because, to some degree, organizations require them. But the gospel always stands in judgment over them.
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the nation. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday in the church. For King was a child of the church….a servant of the church….and a man whose vision and strategy were formed by the church’s Word in obedience to the church’s Lord. As concerns his legacy, history is still in the process of defining him. But this much is indisputable. It was the church that called and shaped him.
Three years into my ministry, Martin’s ended. It is not for me to say how much progress has been made in the church since he died. I have no right to speak of someone else’s progress. For I am a white male with some degree of age on him….who has clearly benefited from all of the systems that exist and pretty much everything the church has to offer. How much of that is ability apart from opportunity, I do not know. Maybe ability blooms in the soil of opportunity. If so, I have been able to serve (virtually all the years of my life) in some very fertile soil. Meaning that I may have earned some of my way, but not all of my way.
But, at the end of the day, this is not just about me. Nothing is ever just about me. Helping me understand this is Robert Coles of Harvard. A lot of you know Robert Coles. He writes wonderful books that touch on issues of clinical psychology, child development and moral theology. But this reminiscence goes all the way back to his childhood. He writes:
We all dreaded getting Miss Avery for the fifth grade. “She’s tough,” was the word that came down from those above us. “Real bad tough.”
And every one of you can recall a similar teacher whose name sent shivers throughout the building. Mine was Miss Dobbs, who taught algebra at Tappan Junior High School. None of us wanted “Dobbs” (we never used the word “Miss”). Although, for the likes of me, I can’t remember why. But at the beginning of every semester, we’d quiz each other in the hallway:
Did you get Dobbs?
No.
Lucky you.
Did you get Dobbs?
Yes.
Boy, do I feel sorry for you.
At any rate, Robert Coles got Miss Avery, assigned (as he was) to Room 5 where she tyrannically reigned. But let him tell it.
To this day, I can hear the words that came my way one morning: “Bobby, I have called your name twice before. This is a school (she bellowed). You are not at home, alone in your bedroom, reading a book on your own. You are here with others and we deserve your attention as much as that book, valuable as it is.”
Which was when she got up from her big teacher’s desk with a ruler in her right hand….not her notorious blackboard pointer, thank God, but a twelve-inch ruler. Bang! Down it came on the desk of Sally Davis, seated four or five ahead of me, for we tall boys had been placed farther back, surely by God’s grace.
Then, having commanded our attention, she began stalking and speaking: “We are entitled to travel on our own paths. But here and now we are walking together.” After which she raised her arm once more, the better to crash the ruler down on Doris Newman’s desk, leading to this terse finale.
“We should, therefore, pay attention to others as well as ourselves. We spend time looking at ourselves. We spend time looking out for ourselves. But please, let us look to our right and to our left, to our front, and to what is going on behind our back. Let us be mindful of others, as we hope they will be of us.”
Back home that afternoon, he told his mother of the instruction offered earlier that morning. The class had been instructed to write it down. And there it was in his hand for his mother to contemplate.
She read the words out loud. Then quietly to herself. Until at long last she said: “Bobby, if more people lived up to those words, the world would be a better place to live.”
Note: Phil Yancey’s wonderful reflections on “Larry the Lobster” (along with his treatment of Acts 10) can be found in his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace? Robert Coles is the James Agee Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard and the author of the Children of Crisis series (five volumes). But this reminiscence first appeared in Notre Dame Magazine. I found it reprinted in the 2004 edition of The Best American Spiritual Writing.
